Water For the People, Not For Profits

The worldwide drive to privatize drinking water rolls on…and it continues to meet popular resistance.

In the Philippines where the battle has been going on for a while the Water for the People Network, a broad alliance of non-government organizations (NGOs) and grassroots-based groups campaigning for people’s control over water services and resources, has challenged the United Nations (UN) to issue a strong statement against the privatization of water services due to its disastrous impact on the human right to access and use water as the multilateral body prepares for a high-level review of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) on September 14-16 in New York.

The group says a fundamental problem in the MDGs alleged goal of reducing the proportion of the world’s people without sustainable access to safe drinking water is “the promotion of the MDGs of the same neoliberal policies such as privatization that have, in the first place, aggravated chronic global poverty and severe inequity.”

Water for the People Network says, “Privatization grossly violates the people’s human right to water because it distorts the provision of water supply and sanitation as a basic service and regards water just like any other commodity that corporations can exploit and profit from. This distortion results in prohibitive user fees and other charges that poor households could not afford. In Metro Manila, for example, the average tariff before the Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System (MWSS) was privatized in August 1997 was PhP8.78 per cubic meter. By January 2005, the private concessionaires Manila Water and Maynilad were charging their costumers PhP16.17 and PhP30.19 per cubic meter, respectively. Worse, of the 13 million Metro Manila residents as of 2003, only 9.1 million have water supply and less than 2 million have sewerage connection.”

In the United States water privatization is exemplified by what is happening in Emmaus, Pennsylvania where officials have been wanting to sell the borough’s water system to a private company. The result, writes The Morning Call, has been an upsurge of protests by local residents who have filled council meeting after council meeting to say “no” to such a plan. Citizens worry about the prospect of significant rate increases and the loss of local control of a resource to large companies.

Opponents if water privatization in the US such as Washington, D.C., advocacy group Public Citizen have raised concerns about private ownership of water, saying that communities would have no say on what happens with their water and would experience high rates. They fear that large, mostly foreign companies are more interested in pleasing shareholders than customers.

And last month the Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace delivered 225,000 cards to the Canadian Government calling for “action by Canada to advocate at the World Bank to end a practice that places conditions on loans for poor countries in the Global South - especially policies that directly or indirectly promote the privatization of public water systems.”

The 225,000 cards were signed by individual Canadians from every part of the country.

"Poor countries need to strengthen their public water services, not have
them placed in the hands of foreign-owned companies. When the profit motive
becomes part of the equation, water prices invariably rise," said Michael Casey of the Canadian group in CNW Telbec . "This practice effectively denies safe, affordable drinking water to millions of people worldwide. At present more than a billion people have no access to clean water. Loan conditions and policies that encourage privatization of water only make that situation worse."

In Ghana where the struggle against the privatization of water is at a fever pitch, you actually can weigh in. To help click here. Sources: CNW Telbec, Water for the People Network, Cyberdyaryo, The Morning Call (Allentown, PA)